The teaching profession has both retention and recruitment problems. High teacher turnover, paired with teacher shortages, has and will prove costly for all schools, particularly those in high poverty areas. Research in other professions suggests that attitudes and perceptions of work matter in both performance and in retention, yet, too often,…

Several recent studies have examined the impacts of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on school operations and student achievement. We complement that work by investigating the law's impacts on teachers' perceptions of their work environments and related job attitudes, including satisfaction and commitment to remain in teaching. Using four waves of the…

This document contains 15 papers on poverty, low-wage work, and survival in the global economy, with emphasis on the following topics: identity and the meaning of work; making decisions about work, family, and welfare; and paths toward change. The following papers are included: "Identity as a Weapon in the Moral Politics of Work and…

This book provides an account and critique of the work ethic, a central aspect of modern capitalist society. Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 considers social changes in Europe in the 16th-17th centuries, maintaining that work was imbued with moral qualities and wealth seeking acquired social legitimacy through religious sanction. Chapter 3…

The lives of working-class women were explored through interviews with 63 middle-aged women, most of whom were employed in working-class jobs and living working-class lives in Baltimore, Maryland. The following were among the areas covered in the interviews: the women's lives on and off the job; their job satisfaction; the reasons they work and…

This book contains 17 papers devoted to the following four aspects of the transition to adulthood: effects of alterations in the structure of opportunity; effects of prior experiences in the family; effects of prior experience in the workplace; and career development and marriage formation during a period of rising inequality. The following papers…